Jean Bodin acknowledges a sovereign prince has the capacity to change the customs of a people (& I largely agree here).
<Jean Bodin / The Sovereign has power over custom
>For which cause Dion Chisostome compares the law to a tyrant, and custom to a king. Moreover the power of the law is much greater than the power of custom: for customs are by laws abolished, but not laws by customs.
<Louis XIV's disdain for & roast of so-called "constitutional monarchy":
>For there is no doubt that this subjection that makes it necessary for a sovereign to take orders from his people is the worst calamity that can befall a man of our rank.
-Louis XIV Quote #1
>It is perverting the order of things to attribute decisions to the subjects and deference to the sovereign, and if I have described to you elsewhere the miserable condition of princes who commit their people and their dignity to the conduct of a prime minister, I have good cause to portray to you here the misery of those who are abandoned to the indiscretion of a popular assembly.
-Louis XIV Quote #2
>I fail to see, therefore, my son, for what reason the kings of France, hereditary kings who can boast that there isn't either a better house, nor greater power, nor more absolute authority than theirs anywhere else in the world today, should rank below these elective princes.
-Louis XIV Quote #3
>It is the essential fault of this monarchy that the Prince may not levy any extraordinary taxes without the Parliament nor keep the Parliament in session without gradually losing his authority, which is sometimes left shattered, as the example of the previous King [Charles I] had sufficiently demonstrated.
-Louis XIV Quote #4
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